


i'm not dying but i bleed now

by tongham



Category: X1 (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Flashbacks, Letters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27553672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tongham/pseuds/tongham
Summary: minhee lets his pencil move as it so pleases, lamenting his static daily routine as he simultaneously goes into detail on the mundane. reading it over once again before he seals it, the tone still comes across as playful and positive, the way it always has. it’s almost as if junho isn’t even –there’s a quiet rap at his door and minhee spins around quickly, remaining silent. “your royal highness?” a royal advisor’s voice calls out after the young prince fails to respond. “the queen asked me to inform you that dinner is about to be served.”another beat. minhee presses the stamp down, wax seal closing the envelope shut. “thank you. tell her majesty i’ll be there shortly.”heels clack down the hallway, echoing until the woman turns the corner. minhee sighs, staring at the letter on his desk. he walks over to the chest at the foot of his bed, unlocking it and pulling out a handheld gift box. opening the lid, he slides the letter in between countless other envelopes for his personal safekeeping.
Relationships: Cha Junho/Kang Minhee
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	i'm not dying but i bleed now

**Author's Note:**

> ok ok time to honour my twitter @... with a rare work from me that employs archive warnings!! i liked how last week's mcd-tagged work turned out and i wanted to try something a bit longer. excuse me for i watched the crown while rewriting uni notes today lol.
> 
> title from my blood by ellie goulding.

even for a teenager, minhee is notoriously awful at getting out of bed in the morning. maybe it’s the added exhaustion brought along with his princely title, maybe it’s the down mattress engineered to perfection – what a way to twist his luxuries for pity, truly.

horns beckoning loudly – irritatingly – on the palace grounds, minhee sighs and forces his body to sit up, pausing momentarily to attend to his spinning head before standing up and navigating the grand halls, down the grand staircase to the grand dining room.  _ grand, everything is grand, _ minhee thinks bitterly.

“good morning, your royal highness.” the guard positioned at the dining room’s entrance bows slightly in polite acknowledgement. minhee nods his head curtly, mindful to not snap at servants – it’s the absolute least he can do.

minhee slides into his chaise wordlessly, tension in the room taut as his family members, all seated, raise their eyes from their plates and cutlery to share a look of concern. minhee bites his lip to stay quiet.

eyes averting to the meal, eggs and a choice of assorted fruits, minhee’s mind wanders again. the eggs are hard-boiled – junho hated boiled eggs with a passion, introducing the house of kang’s chefs (and minhee himself) to the superiority of poaching over the course of his family’s diplomatic month-long stay just over a year ago.  _ last june, _ how could minhee ever forget?

quietly slicing into the egg with a butterknife, minhee eats slowly, bites intersped with sips of water. surveying the room – the king, the queen, the princess and the prince – minhee understands he should stay for longer and reaches into the bowl of fruits, half-empty and shuffled around the table while he was restless upstairs.

the assortment includes the usual suspects: multicoloured apples, grapevines, oranges, pears, bananas, peaches. minhee’s hand holds onto the peach – again, junho’s favourite. minhee never cared much for the fruit before junho, preferring sweet red apples in these instances. the sight and scent alone of the fruit trigger memories, of junho, of sunny afternoons in the palace gardens where minhee would be alone with his thoughts until the elder snuck up on him, a pair of peaches and a knife in hand. junho quickly assumed the responsibility of fruit-cutting after minhee sliced his thumb open while wrestling with a crunchier, not-yet-ripened specimen.

memories connecting more and more distantly, minhee smiles when he thinks of that day, the worry that flooded junho’s innocent eyes before he quickly ran back into the palace and asked around very unsuspiciously for a bandage. he smiles when he thinks of junho rushing back, out of breath as he promptly fixed minhee up, the brushing of fingers the first skin-to-skin contact between two royals who have lived two lifetimes being conditioned into interpersonal austerity.

“minhee?” his elder sister asks quietly and his head snaps up, sharply jerked back into the present.  _ as you should be, _ minhee sharply reminds himself,  _ there’s no point in thinking about it now. _ “may you pass the tea kettle?”

minhee’s eyes shift to the boiling water just in his reach, personally handing the kettle over to his sister. at least at breakfastime, the king and queen ( _ your parents, _ minhee corrects his thinking) prefer to keep their morning meal between the family exclusively, slightly more relaxed when it’s just the five-member family unit as they manoeuvre plates and dishes among themselves. almost as if they’re a normal family.

“thank you.”  _ however, _ minhee reminds himself,  _ the words remain stiff. _ their clothes, despite being referred to as pajamas, still remain stiff, too expensive to be comfortable.

tired of the charade, minhee clears his throat with intent, watching to ensure his father is paying attention. “may i be excused?”

the king’s steely eyes turn for a moment, exchanging a look with his wife, before addressing his youngest son. “you may.”

minhee stands up a bit too abruptly, chair nearly toppling backward – no noise, all furniture in the castle has been furbished to honour the house of kang’s core value of silence. reflexively catching the post, minhee honours his family name and leaves with nothing more than a small nod.

* * *

minhee is very grateful for his brother, if anything for his status of seniority, intercepting the title of king and all the stresses that come along with it. if royals should be revered for anything, it should be on their excellent forward-thinking. with a full head of hair, the current king is already integrating his eventual successor into debriefings and other miscellaneous royal meetings. better yet, minhee’s father further insists on his inclusion – as the royals always say,  _ you never know. _

when minhee protested his inclusion, the king lectured him with a hefty list of what-ifs, rhymed off as easily as a royal address –  _ what if your brother elopes? has to marry into another royal family for diplomatic reasons? what if he falls deathly ill? is assassinated? _ minhee flinches at that last possibility. with many more years of royal experience on his resume, his father should really be better at reading the room.

_ (refusing to back down, minhee challenged his father to abolish male-preference primogeniture. he didn’t seem to appreciate the smart comment, as good of an idea it is.) _

minhee’s been attending these official meetings for years, knowing exactly how to dress – same outfit every time – when to speak, and how to conceal his boredom and/or apathy. he has anecdotes aplenty of his turbulent history with royal debriefings, it’s truly a shame that the punchlines are littered with confidential state secrets.

still, minhee put in the effort of taking black permanent marker to the stories and instances stuck in his mind to tell junho about those he found particularly entertaining – first in person last june before their correspondences translated to pen and paper, writing the anecdotes in good jest, wary of the possibility of interception at either end of the process.

maintaining his silence for the duration of the meeting, aware of the government officials’ extreme caution around him, minhee bows his head to his brother, father, and the nation’s democratic leader before leaving for his room. every step resounds heavy in the empty corridors, a housekeeper turning as he crosses into a freshly-swept section of hallway.

sitting down at his desk with bones heavy, the prince pulls a sheet of parchment out of the small drawers, for decorative purposes only, paper clean ivory. plucking a mechanical pencil from the cup at the corner of the desk – old habit, minhee is too impatient to allow ink to dry – he starts to write, a bit crooked but otherwise neat, an aftereffect of his royal education.

like he always does, he writes to junho – if it’s not for formality’s sake, minhee doesn’t spontaneously decide to contact anyone else, not even his other peers in neighbouring kingdoms as his parents so wish he took interest in. well, with one glaring exception.

minhee lets his pencil move as it so pleases, lamenting his static daily routine as he simultaneously goes into detail on the mundane. reading it over once again before he seals it, the tone still comes across as playful and positive, the way it always has. it’s almost as if junho isn’t even –

there’s a quiet rap at his door and minhee spins around quickly, remaining silent. “your royal highness?” a royal advisor’s voice calls out after the young prince fails to respond. “the queen asked me to inform you that dinner is about to be served.”

another beat. minhee presses the stamp down, wax seal closing the envelope shut. “thank you. tell her majesty i’ll be there shortly.”

heels clack down the hallway, echoing until the woman turns the corner. minhee sighs, staring at the letter on his desk. he walks over to the chest at the foot of his bed, unlocking it and pulling out a handheld gift box. opening the lid, he slides the letter in between countless other envelopes for his personal safekeeping.

* * *

minhee isn’t in the mood for a party at the moment but, unfortunately, he does not have much of a say in those affairs. if he dared to express any second thought, he would be curtly rejected by the king, his brother making a snide comment on minhee’s antisocial tendencies and general unroyal attitude. they wouldn’t get it so what’s the point? minhee will save himself the humiliation.

as a result of their insistence to improve diplomatic ties with a foreign nation on the generational offbeat – here, the establishment of peace and friendship traditions must take the place of marriage, much less effort than regular and precariously-planned garden parties and soirées – minhee finds himself on the palace lawn, sitting alone with a glass of champagne.

the queen passes by and gives his shoulder a light squeeze, smiling weakly down at him before a member of the extended royal family calls her over. raising his eyes momentarily to ensure the distraction of those around him, minhee lets himself remember.

it was in this exact quartier of the gardens, among the cinquefoil, where minhee silently pressed his family’s engagement band into junho’s palm during the house of cha’s sending-away party. he remembers the image of junho’s eyes widening, question the taller boy’s haste – minhee, logical as he is, reasoned out that he needs to make junho his before his parents marry him off to another kingdom.

_ (”isn’t this a bit too fast?” _

_ “we’re not getting any younger, junho. it’s almost time for us to get married anyway and i won’t let them arrange it any differently.” _

_ “selfish, aren’t you?” _

_ “very.”) _

minhee remembers the evening clearly – the guests dispersing, gardens finally empty and minhee finally,  _ finally _ kissing junho. the night was sweet, junho pulling minhee away from his other preoccupations for “one last kiss” at least six times. minhee had wished he’d fake-proposed earlier, a continued and constant hope for more  _ time. _

eyes threatening to spill over, minhee snaps out of it and diverts his attention to eavesdropping, inadvertently acquiring information from the middle-aged, sunhat-donning women surrounding him. “never thought i’d live to see these two kingdoms unite peacefully.”

“i could say the same. say, do you know why so suddenly?”

“i do believe the house of kang is scrambling to make up for their allies in numbers ever since the cha lineage was executed in the revolution up north. the ties between those two kingdoms were very strong.”

minhee stands up abruptly, champagne tipping over the edge of his glass, over his hand and onto the grass. staring down at the small mess with lips pursed, minhee downs the rest of the alcohol in one swig before he goes to find his sister for the distraction.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! comments/kudos are always much-appreciated + find me on twitter @deuichas! or at curiouscat.me/tongham!! time for me to go think of who i can k-word off in a fic next week <33


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